The current bullish rally may be the last cycle before the final adoption of Bitcoin and major blockchains, that is, their mass acceptance by the people. Some Twitter users have begun to compare the pace of expansion of the Internet and the main cryptocurrencies. It turns out that the number of active Bitcoin users is currently comparable to the popularity of the Internet in 1997.
The current bull rally may be the last cycle before the final adoption of Bitcoin and major blockchains, that is, their mass acceptance by ordinary people. Some Twitter users have begun to compare the pace of expansion of the Internet and the main cryptocurrencies.
It turns out that the number of active Bitcoin users is currently comparable to the popularity of the Internet in 1997. This suggests that we are still in the initial phase of BTC popularization.
Bitcoin (BTC) User Growth
An important step in this process was the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved on January 10, 2024. Thanks to this, exchange-traded funds based on BTC are now traded on the world’s largest exchanges.
Cryptocurrency itself, in turn, has become more accessible and understandable for professional institutional investors who are willing to invest large capitals in this industry. In the context of what is happening, popular analysts express their own expectations for the future growth of the market in this cycle.
Acheron Trading Director Laurent Benayoun is betting on Bitcoin at the $180,000 level during this bull market. In turn, Bitfinex representatives expect BTC to reach between 100,000 and 120,000 by the end of 2024.
How Many People Use Bitcoin?
An image has garnered many posts on Twitter among digital asset fans. It shows the current number of Bitcoin users with a clear reference to 1997. It was a year in which approximately the same number of people actively used the Internet.
It is extremely difficult to confirm the accuracy of both numbers, but they clearly show how far the world is from global BTC adoption. The relatively low popularity of digital assets is also evident through criticism of cryptocurrencies.
In mid-March, Democratic U.S. Senators Jack Reed and LaFonza Butler wrote an open letter to the Securities Exchange Commission. In it, they asked the regulator’s leadership not to approve new cryptocurrency-based spot ETFs.
Politicians attributed their request to active manipulation of the coin market and poor liquidity in the industry. In addition, they mentioned the significant presence of scammers in the world of cryptocurrencies, so investors supposedly need protection against such assets.
At the same time, in 1997, significantly fewer people were using the Internet. Back then only 70 million people were connected at all times.
Amazon’s entry into the Stock Market and its Relationship with Bitcoin
The year 1997 was chosen for comparison for a reason: it was in 1997 when Amazon went public at a price of $18 per share. If an investor invested $4,000 to buy Amazon stock during the dot-com boom in 1997, its value in 2023 would be approximately $7.3 million.
The cryptocurrency appeared thanks to the activities of an anonymous developer under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who decentralized Bitcoin and limited the maximum supply of the cryptocurrency to 21 million coins. At the same time, as of today, a certain part of BTC has already been irretrievably lost. This means that the actual amount of BTC in circulation is much less than the amount of coins mined so far.
By Audy Castaneda
